First of all our site www.lexiconsoftware.gr is still down for about 40 hours and no one answers to our tickets. And if they answer they answer with the same you know moto (copy amd paste) that they are going ahaid to speak with the system administrator to solve the problem. I wonder where the hell is the system administrator and they can't reach him for 40 hours. All they sterted after a question of mine what is the procedure to move from USA hosting and go to Europe hosting. They answer that it will take some time depending of how many MB ais the site which is OK and that they cannot schedule the time but only the day which is OK too. Also they ask me if I want to move to Europe. I told them that I want to move but first to arrange the day so we have time to inform our customers. They didn't respond and they start the migration immediately. After 40 hours the site is not available and when i'm asking why it takes so long they say that the migration stopped from an error. Even if they aware of the error they are not doing anything.
I reviewed your tickets related to the migration, and for the record - since this is a public complaint - the migration was certainly not started unexpectedly. You indicated that you wanted to migrate twice: "Yes I want to proceed to move from USA to UK," to which we sent the pre-migration list of warnings and caveats, then in response to those warnings you replied, "OK, I want to migrate my site to UK." There is no mention in any ticket opened prior to migration of scheduling a specific date or time so your customers could be informed. In any event, the warning email that we sent also states that we cannot schedule migration for a specific time or date, and that if you wish to migrate on a specific date, you should contact us on that date and tell us to make the move. When you replied with, "OK, I want to migrate my site to UK," we took that as the instruction to proceed, since you had previously made no mention of scheduling either a date or time. After migration began and the site was unavailable you opened a new ticket that indicated that you wanted to schedule the migration and inform your customers, but that was after the fact. Unfortunately we cannot stop a migration in progress and reverse the process. Additionally, there are no tickets indicating an extended outage after the migration, or any tickets escalated to admins, so I am not sure where the 40 hours of downtime or the complaints regarding escalated tickets come from. I can only assume there were paths or connection strings that needed to be updated in your application(s), and that is why the site was down (we also make note in the pre-migration warnings that this will likely be the case). I understand that you may have wanted to delay the migration until you felt you were ready to go forward, but you did indicate that you wanted to proceed. Perhaps there was a miscommunication, and I'm sorry about that, but we spent a considerable amount of time and effort to ensure that the migration process is as painless as we can possibly make it. Sorry it was bumpy for you. That is never our intention.
Just for the record here are the replies 1# Fri 10/17/2008 9:29 am +2:00 GMT RE: [TECH-DASP #1231011]: Europe or USA hosting Yes I want to proceed to move from USA to UK, but tell me first if there will be a dead time between the transfer to the new location. Thanks a lot Kostas Kousinovalis Lexicon Software 2, Gonou Giota Square ? 581 00 - Giannitsa +30-23820-24.662 / Fax : +30-23820-29.865 - [email protected] -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2008 10:06 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [TECH-DASP #1231011]: Europe or USA hosting Hello, We do offer a service of migration from the US to the UK datacenter. The datacenter is located in London, England. We canâ??t setup a test account without charging you but here is a link that you can use to check the connection speed of our UK datacenter. Click here: http://dasptest-eu.com/ Let me know if you are ready to proceed or have any more questions, or you would like more information about changing over to the UK datacenter. Please let us know if you have any further questions. Thank you, Nona DiscountASP.NET - Microsoft Gold Certified Partner - asp.netPRO Magazine 2008 Readers' Choice Award for Best Hosting Service - Visual Studio Magazine 2007 Readers' Choice Award for Best Hosting Service and the second 2# Fri 10/17/2008 12:11 pm +2:00 GMT RE: [TECH-DASP #1231011]: Europe or USA hosting OK, I want to migrate my site to UK There are no SQL databases or other connections but the site is 2 GB Please tell me when the migration will be place Thank you Kostas Kousinovalis Software Architect - Lexicon Software 2, Gonou Giota Square ? 581 00 - Giannitsa +30-23820-24.662 / Fax : +30-23820-29.865 - [email protected] -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Friday, October 17, 2008 9:36 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [TECH-DASP #1231011]: Europe or USA hosting Hello, Migration from our Los Angeles data center to our European data center is possible if your site meets certain criteria. Please read all of the following message carefully before deciding to migrate, and note that there is a one-time migration fee of $25. IMPORTANT: Migration includes moving your files, database (MS SQL 2005 only - see below), updating DNS, etc., but you should assume that some adjustments will have to be made post-migration. For example, the database server name will change, etc., so connection strings and any other server-specific configuration may need to be updated. We cannot make any assurances or guarantees that your site will function properly after migration! Most adjustments should be relatively simple configuration issues, and all of the pertinent server information will be available in Control Panel when the migration is complete. We cannot migrate any site that currently uses: - MS SQL 2000 - MySQL - LiveStats For users of MS SQL 2000 and MySQL, we recommend upgrading to MS SQL 2005. We also suggest that you make the change to MS SQL 2005 prior to migration, in order to assure that your site is fully functional before the move (but remember, the server name will change post-migration, so your connection string(s) will have to be updated accordingly). Your web site and database must be at the same physical location, so you cannot continue to use a database on our U.S. servers and migrate only the site to the European servers. You will not have access to the U.S. database after migration is complete. For users of LiveStats, that service must be canceled before your site can be migrated. Accounts migrated to the European data center will have SmarterStats service available as a replacement for LiveStats at no extra charge. Note that your site statistics will begin the day after migration. Historical data from the servers in the U.S. data center will not be available once the site is moved. During migration your web site will be offline from the moment migration begins until it is completed. How long the process takes to complete is dependent on the size of your site, database, etc. Smaller sites will migrate very quickly. Larger sites can take up to an hour or more to complete. We cannot provide an estimate of how long migration will take. We cannot schedule the migration for a specific time of day. We can only tell you the day of the week that the migration will take place. However, you will receive an email notice before migration begins, and when migration is complete. If you have any further questions, or you wish to you wish to schedule migration now, please let us know. - Mike O. DiscountASP.NET - Microsoft Gold Certified Partner - asp.netPRO Magazine 2008 Readers' Choice Award for Best Hosting Service - Visual Studio Magazine 2007 Readers' Choice Award for Best Hosting Service In each message you see that i'm expecting an answer for when the migration will start.
With my little knowledge i think that you had to copy first the site to the new location and then change the DNS to point to the new site. With this the dead time it would be very short, and if i knew the server's IP i tell to our customers to put it in host file. But you stopped the site from the beginning of the copy process and after 40 hours you realize that the site is too big (2.4 GB) and it couldn?t transfer and you opened again. I want to move to UK but now i'm afraid for what is going to happen.
Yes, we stop the sites from the beginning of the process. That is to avoid missing any changes, database entries, etc. If we left the old site up during the move, and the move took a considerable amount of time, the site could be incomplete at the new location. In the helpdesk responses that you quoted you can see that it says, "During migration your web site will be offline from the moment migration begins until it is completed. How long the process takes to complete is dependent on the size of your site, database, etc." 2.4 GB is going to take a long time to move. But not 40 hours. Nor would we let a migration run for 40 hours without stopping it. How much of that 2.4 GB is necessary to the site? Are there any files you could download, then delete from the server and upload yourself after migration? If you can reduce the size the migration will complete much more quickly.
